PLENARY SESSIONS PROGRAMME

Today we well start our 'Sneak Preview' with the Plenary on Monday 22 September. This is very first event of the EU PVSEC conference week, and we would certainly like to see everyone there at this early time of the day. The theme 'PV Everywhere' points to our commitment to PV Technology: never before have applications been so rich and yet affordable, encouraging innovative ideas across the globe.

We start Monday morning with a plenary talk about requirements when PV will really be everywhere. Uwe Rau of Jülich Aachen Research Alliance in Germany, will give us an 'Outlook Into PV Growth Beyond Grid Flexibility via Integration with Storage and Fuels'. This talk is nothing less than imagining PV as a main power source in a highly industrial country which is very concerned about a dunkelflaute (timespans where is no wind and no sun). What would we need to really overcome this last big problem which stands in the way of further PV growth? How do we store summer-electricity also for the winter, and where? The team promises to show the approaches and results of their re-examination of these issues, and estimate that a very decentralised approach might be the best option, as it could enhance system efficiency, resilience and societal acceptance of large-scale PV. 
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Welcome to our second preview of the EU PVSEC plenary talks, which we want to continue with a glance at those scheduled for Wednesday. This is the morning of plenary talks, as we are preparing for a total of nine presentations covering the topics of:

• Si PV Manufacturing: Pushing the Limits of Performance (08:30)
• Perovskite – Silicon Tandems: Towards Commercialization (10:30)
• PV Stability in the Field (11:30)

Let’s start with the early morning talks, where we placed the latest information about Si-technology and its developments. We reflect the current market situation with our first keynote plenary which will be given by Guangtao Yang of Trina Solar, Changzhou, China. His talk, titled 'Silicon Surface and Interface Study for >27% Efficient SHJ Solar Cell' will give insights into the current company strategy towards ever higher efficiencies in mass production. To achieve such high efficiencies, the optimisation of surface morphology becomes an important parameter to study. Trina will report on an attempt to chemically polish the usual rear/front texturisation in order to flatten the pyramid surface. They find that adjusting the polishing parameters significantly impacts the wafer’s optical performance. 
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Welcome to our last preview of the EU PVSEC plenary talks, which we want to continue with a glance at those scheduled for Friday. Friday morning is a kind of 'wrap-up' where the collective photovoltaic knowledge presented throughout the week is presented against the background of the ever-closer major energy source of the world. In the last plenary session of the conference, we cover the pressing issues when it comes to truly terawatt scale PV production: the topic 'Flexibility and Sustainability' addresses both the challenge of integrating PV into a conventional energy system (or vice-versa?) as well as possible material problems, either because of scarcity or the place of PV products in the circular economy.

The plenary session starts at 10:30 with an invited presentation on 'PV Plus Storage as a Flexibility Enabler of the Energy System'. Gerd Heilscher of Technische Hochschule Ulm in Germany will explain how important PV storage will be harden our energy system for times of low sunshine and less wind. Current market conditions make storage systems also an attractive business case for a range of operators, from private owners of small systems to very large or aggregated systems...